


You Know What They Say About Assumptions

by 14winters



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 19:22:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8460016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14winters/pseuds/14winters
Summary: Joan doesn't sleep with Mycroft. Sherlock finds out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write Sherlock and Joan talking out what Sherlock said about her and Mycroft in 2.01, in the process beginning/establishing my AU where Joan never sleeps with Mycroft (ever).There's implied eventual Joanlock, but that's because in my inner Elementary AU Joanlock happens eventually but not until season 4. Of course this turned into a much longer conversation than I meant it to be. I tried to remember how early this happens in their partnership, how much they still have to learn about each other. I hope I succeeded. Any comments are greatly appreciated!

“Was I right, Watson?”

Joan was chopping vegetables in the kitchen, preparing the first dinner for her and Sherlock after their return from London, when she heard Sherlock’s voice behind her. She didn’t bother turning.

“About what?” she said, her tone mild and not the least bit irritated. She knew exactly where this was going.

She heard his steps come further into the room. He was barefoot. She’d noticed after a particularly long or trying case (and being around his brother had made him very trying) Sherlock preferred walking around barefoot and sometimes even shirtless for a couple days afterward, as if his body needed the greater physical freedom to shed the stress. He exercised during a case for the same reason—trying to shed energy to get his brain focused, or re-focused. Joan could relate. She’d gone on a long run their first morning back in New York. And now she was already in her pajamas and it was barely 5-o-clock.

“Were my brother’s carnal delights too tempting to resist?” Sherlock had come to lean on the counter next to her, his eyes darting from her face to the practiced movements of the knife in her hand. She kept chopping in a steady rhythm, still not looking at him.

“I didn’t sleep with Mycroft,” she said, the smallest hint of satisfaction in her voice. She should’ve taken his bet, she’d be cashing in right now.

She saw him shift out of the corner of her eye. She might even say uncomfortably. There was a pause.

“I am surprised. You’re not lying,” he stated. She couldn’t tell if he was pleased or displeased. Just confused.

“And why would I lie?” She finally turned to look at him, setting the knife down. His gaze moved up from the knife to her face. He concentrated on her hands sometimes—it was a habit she’d noticed soon after they met each other. But she did the same thing. His were in fists at his sides. A sign he was tenser than he was letting on.

She could see every muscle in his torso fighting not to tense up—he was shirtless as she suspected, but he still wore the trousers he’d been wearing earlier in the day. She raised her brows at him, knowing he was still trying to form a response and enjoying his discomfort maybe a little too much.

“It seemed clear to me you were trying to conceal your attraction to him from me, back in London,” he said, his confusion clear in voice, the last word stretched slightly in a silent question.

“What I was hiding from you was my discomfort. You know bringing up my sex life makes me uncomfortable, yet you always do it. Bringing it up with Mycroft made me more uncomfortable than usual.” She spoke matter-of-factly. She wasn’t angry anymore. Her last conversation with Mycroft had opened her eyes in a way. But Sherlock didn’t have to know the whole story.

He only looked more confused. And contrite. It was a novel feeling, seeing Sherlock feeling sorry for something. It’s not that he was never sorry, it’s that he often didn’t know the moments he should be sorry until someone, or something, made it explicitly clear to him. Now was as good a time as ever.

“Your brother was a complete unknown to me before we went to London. When I first met him, I didn’t know what to think. Yes, I was curious about your relationship with him, and I was curious of what kind of person he was. Honestly, he seemed nothing like you. I wouldn’t have said you were related if I’d met him as a stranger on the street,” she said, tilting her head and picturing the scenario as she spoke.  Even if both of them were clean-shaven, she imagined she still wouldn’t be able to see the resemblance. Not even in their eyes or noses, or shape of the face. Nothing.

Sherlock scoffed, but he stayed silent, obviously wanting her to continue.

“When he invited me to dinner, yes, I thought he wanted to sleep with me. And I was ready to say no,” she said, her voice darkening on the last statement, but her expression remaining tranquil. “But that wasn’t it at all. He just wanted to talk about you,” she said, watching him closely. His shoulders were visibly stiff now.

“What did he say then?” he asked, his tone brusque.

Joan had to bite her tongue before she mentioned she’d deduced Mycroft had been ill. That wasn’t her secret to tell. “He told me he’d resolved to make things better between you both. But you took him by surprise and he fell back into old habits.”

Sherlock was practically scowling. “You didn’t help, you know,” she added, smiling wryly at him. He would barely meet her eyes.

"You obviously weren't listening when I told you I wasn't attracted to Mycroft. What did you call it? Classic transference,” she said, a mix of bitterness and humor in her voice. He still wasn’t looking at her.

“I know you like to throw out sexist deductions just to irritate me, Sherlock, but that was a bit more than sexist." Still, he said nothing. He was staring at the floor of the kitchen as if it held some answer he couldn’t unlock. She tried again.

“Are you jealous of Mycroft?" she asked, careful not to make her tone accusatory. She wasn’t trying to accuse, she just wanted answers. "I mean it's only natural, he's your older brother.” 

He could sense her scrutiny, but despite his perceptiveness Sherlock was notoriously terrible at hiding his stronger emotions. He was angry. There was a familiar glint in his eyes and a tightness around his mouth that brought to mind all the moments he had lashed out in frustration. Never at her or another person (save criminals who had deserved his wrath), only objects. But the tension emanated from him like a physical force.

"If I was jealous, Watson, wouldn't I have objected more strongly to the idea of you two sleeping together?" he said, his voice mild. But the stiffness she saw in his face, his eyes so full of a darkness she seldom saw, it was more telling than any yelling or cursing would be.

"Well, that depends. What exactly is it about Mycroft that makes you jealous of him?" she asked, shifting from one foot to the other. This was one of the few instances Sherlock was not hiding his emotions with a veneer of disgust or insults, and she intended to take advantage of it.

 "I'm not jealous of Mycroft. I am..." He was visibly struggling to find words, something that was so novel to her she actually felt a little sympathy for him. She didn’t show it though.

"I am, admittedly, possessive of our partnership,” he said, gesturing between them in a rapid, erratic movement with one hand. “And the idea of Mycroft earning any of your affections, however shallow, upset me a great deal."

"What makes you think a relationship between me and Mycroft would threaten our partnership?" She put one hand on her hip, dinner forgotten as she considered his words. "He's your brother, not an enemy."

“Despite the rapprochement I mentioned, Watson, Mycroft has never acted as a brother or an enemy to me. At times he’s been a little more than an annoyance,” he explained, looking away from her to scowl at some point in the kitchen floor again.

She really had to fight from mentioning the illness now. “There’s more to it than that,” she said, trying to make him look at her with only the force of her stare. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Recognizing the gentleness in her voice, Sherlock finally glanced at her, something akin to resignation in his face. Or was it pain?

Sherlock took a silent slow breath, then spoke. "Father never favored either of us. His neglect was equally cruel. But whether through his laziness or more conventional bearing, Mycroft earned less of Father's ire."

The anger in Sherlock’s face and body had become a sort of pain she hadn’t seen him show very often. Sherlock’s pain was much like his anger, but there was a heaviness to his shoulders, a different shadow in his eyes, that bespoke a weariness he seldom showed outside the walls of the brownstone. She found herself remembering when he’d told one of their suspects how he had been abused in boarding school. She was becoming more convinced that had been the truth, not a manipulative lie.

"Through no effort of his own, no doubt, Mycroft remained an upstanding citizen while I made myself infamous—Father's words—as an embarrassment to the family. My conduct in boarding school was the least of it. My drug use was always a topic of contention,” he continued, he eyes darting to her face with an attempt at a wry smile. But Sherlock’s wryness almost came out a grimace. “Mycroft tried in his own way to help but his contributions did nothing to improve my situation."

She decided to press him. "What did he do?"

"In an uncharacteristically preemptive action, he took my stash of heroin without informing me. Only once. This was several months after the events concerning his ex-fiancée, understand. He was still incensed with me. This was before I encountered Moriarty. My drug use was not yet what it became after Moriaty's ruse,” he added, bobbing his head in the considering way he had. She noticed how tense he still was, in the way his hands pressed against the counter behind him, the muscles in his arms moving with each small movement of his fingers. His right hand that was closest to her was shifting from almost clenched to his thumb moving between every finger in slow, tight movements.

 “I confess I took it as a personal affront that he would invade a space I deemed mine, no matter that it was father's property, and take something that didn't belong to him. Including himself in matters that did not concern him. The latter did not surprise me, you saw that in London.” He glanced at her again, and she gave a small nod, quietly urging him to continue. He rolled his shoulders once, his teeth noticeably clenching with a shift of muscle in his jaw. “While the former…He did not do it to help me wean myself off the drug. If he had I would've scrapped his actions up to his wanton laziness in his dealings with anything concerning the problems I caused my family.”

Joan wanted to take issue with his phrasing—she was beginning to understand the situation with his family had been much the reverse—but she refrained. It was a conversation they could have later.  

“No, he took my stash of heroin out of spite. To teach me some sort of lesson no doubt," he finished, with a tight breath and a final clenching of his hands, showing her he’d rather be done with the conversation several minutes ago.

“Much like him exploding what was left of your things in London?” she ventured, not sure if he had really felt positively about that or not.

He gave a half-shrug, nodding toward her in acknowledgement. “That was more innovative on his part, I admit. Both of us are guilty of holding a grudge, I’m afraid.”

“I noticed,” she said, trying not to let her mouth twist in a mix of exasperation and sadness.

"He and Father have long felt they should have some power over me.” He paused, obviously thinking how to phrase his next words. The anger was muted now, and she briefly let herself feel glad that she had pressed him to talk.

“And my pursuits in the art of deduction have distracted me extensively enough that I could avoid the ramifications of that reality. But seeing Mycroft again brought that reality back to me,” he said, getting that wide look in his eyes that made him look so childlike. She knew it was just how his face worked, but she couldn’t help but think that when Sherlock was seriously upset, he had trouble hiding anything he was feeling. It was something she found difficult to relate to.

“What ramifications?” she said, only curiosity in her tone.

He was looking away from her again, both hands braced against the counter behind him, the fingers of his right hand tapping out an erratic rhythm. She could almost hear his teeth clenching.

“My family is a double-edged sword, Watson. Like many families, the dysfunction outweighs the function. I have long wondered…” He trailed off, his stare pointing blindly somewhere in front of him, a lost look coming onto his face. It made it very difficult for Joan not to reach out. But she’d had a lot of practice at keeping her distance, so she did.

“…Whether the dysfunction divides itself evenly between one’s offspring, or if by its very nature that dysfunction visits itself upon one child more heavily than the other.”

He couldn’t bring himself to be specific. Joan looked down at his tapping fingers, the tapping now isolated to his forefinger and middle finger. She wished she could reach out to touch his arm, like she had so long ago when his vengeance against M had nearly landed him in prison. But the invitation wasn’t there.

“It was hard, seeing Mycroft again. I didn’t see…” She trailed off, something in his face telling her the subject was closed. It wasn’t anger or sadness, it was just a distancing. Joan sighed inwardly, dropped her hand from her hip and turned to begin chopping vegetables again.

“And, Watson, he is a dissolute charmer and frankly undeserving of someone of your discerning intelligence,” he added, his words almost stumbling over each other in their haste. He spoke as if he was continuing some other conversation entirely. “That I mistook your offense for proof of your attraction to him was nothing but a result of my resentment of my brother. For that I apologize."

There was a long moment of silence while Joan studied him, not trying to force more out of him, just absorbing what she’d heard. Watched the lines in his forehead, the twist in his mouth, the stillness of his hands. Definitely a closed subject for now. She turned to look down at the knife moving smoothly up and down over the orange and red peppers.

“Hmm. So you no longer think I was suffering from ‘classic transference’?” She glanced at him sidelong, caught him doing that uncomfortable shifting again. It was difficult not to smile.

“I confess, Watson, your attraction to Mycroft was more an insertion than a deduction, based upon my resentment no doubt.”

“It’s jealousy, Sherlock, I understand.”

“Jealousy implies that I believed I would lose something that I had previously possessed. You and I have no intention of having sex with each other,” he said in that matter-of-fact way of his, making that gesture between them with his hand again.

She kept chopping as if those words hadn’t made her clench, her grip on the knife tightening. “No, we don’t,” she said simply, her tone calm. She refrained from mentioning that by bringing up the subject of them sleeping together himself, she now knew he had thought of it too.

“And as I said, you two have practically no family resemblance,” she added. She was tempted to ask what his mother had looked like, but the subject of May Holmes was far more closed than any other, so she bit her tongue. Again.

He hummed in response, and as she glanced over she saw him take stock of what she’d gathered on the counter for their dinner. “May I be of assistance?” he said, rising up on his toes once in a familiar gesture of eagerness. She finally let herself smile.

-

After dinner, Joan settled in the library to read a new medical journal until she felt like going to bed. They didn’t have a case right now, and she expected Sherlock to either be in the basement, lock room, or kitchen, fiddling with some experiment. He usually kept his noisier or smellier experiments away from the library, where he knew she liked to go after dinner.

But tonight he sat across from her, seconds after she’d donned her reading glasses and cracked open the medical journal. She looked up at him. He now had one of his t-shirts on, and sweatpants. On his feet was a pair of his colorful socks, stripes of green, black, and red, toes gray. He tapped the arm of the chair with his left hand, not hard enough to hear but enough to tell her he wanted to talk. She blinked once.

“Sherlock, what is it?”

“I felt our conversation was not finished earlier,” he said, and she could hear both his attempt at nonchalance and his anxiety. She kept her expression impassive.

“The one about conspiracy theories in medicine, Clyde’s new terrarium, or your brother?” she said, looking back down at her medical journal and raising her chin slightly. She preferred he not be vague. She also didn’t like putting words in his mouth.

His fingers stopped tapping. He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger in a semi-closed fist instead. “Mycroft,” he said, the word almost grated on, but his expression was calm enough. She lowered the journal to her lap and closed it, raising her brows expectantly.

“I understand I took the wrong stance from the beginning, but I also was unclear in my intentions.”

“Intentions…?” She prompted him, feeling he needed the encouragement.

“I was not clear in why I made the statement I did. About classic transference,” he offered, his left hand make a random waving gesture that said he long wished he could take back the words and was frustrated by the fact he couldn’t.

“Hmm, I believe it was to communicate your possessiveness over me and our partnership.” There was no irritability in her tone, but a lightness that communicated her ire all the same.

“Yes, but I want to make it clear, Watson, you are free to make your own decisions. I should not dictate what you do as part of your personal life,” he said, his anxiety clear now. He delivered his message coolly, as was his wont, but he spoke a little too fast. She banked down her sympathy this time.

She fixed her stare on him, catching his eye and not letting him look away. “You mean ‘assume’, Sherlock. You assumed I would sleep with Mycroft because you assumed I could not sleep with you. Now let me ask you to clarify your intentions further. Should I take your assessment that I _can’t_ sleep with you as confirmation of only my feelings or an indirect statement of yours as well?”

He caught on to her meaning quickly. It was one of the things she liked about him—he never pretended not to understand. His eyes went from mildly intent to hard as stone, his frown deepening.

“You do not dictate to me, Sherlock. You shouldn’t be dictating to anyone unless they’re a suspect, or someone who’s hurt you.” He looked down, away from her, his fingers tapping rapidly, audibly now.

“Why do you think you can dictate to me about my sex life? Is it because I’ve made you uncomfortable?” she asked, her words coming out more carefully, if not slower, to try to counter his agitation.

“No, no, Watson, that’s not it,” he said, a touch of annoyance entering his voice. She knew he was agitated more with himself, and he was hunching his shoulders in a way that said he wanted to leave but also wanted to release his thoughts. It was a war she often saw taking place within him.

“You are an exceptional person, Watson. I’ve told you numerous times how…how much you’ve been beneficial to me, to my process. And you’ve grown as an investigator a great deal over these past months.” He looked back up at her again, his expression taut. “I sense a distance in you though. And, yes, I did assume, I assumed the tension that can occur between a man and woman in the same living space would manifest as a necessary distancing on your part—hence my assumption that you had considered sex between us. In my dislike for Mycroft I let that perception—that assumption—be revealed in a way I did not intend. Hence my effort to explain my intentions to you now.”

Joan now struggled to keep her expression neutral—something she usually did not struggle with. Her annoyance, her anger, she did not hold back often. But it wasn’t anger or annoyance she was fighting not to show. He could see in her eyes how upset she was. It was something softer, less examined, that was trying to rise to the surface, and she feared it.

Her lengthening silence, a silence in which she let her gaze linger, unfocused, at some point over his left shoulder, signaled to Sherlock that she wanted him to continue. “As for my feelings on the subject, Watson, I don’t believe our partnership would coincide well with a sexual relationship. Aesthetically you have always been…exceedingly engaging but—”

“Stop.” She held up her hand, still not looking at him. “I get it. I just wanted you to explain yourself. Now that’s done, we can move on.”

“I’ve made you uncomfortable,” he stated, the cool observer definitely back now.

“No, I just want to drop the subject.” She kept her eyes trained on some point in the floor next to Sherlock, feeling a sense of déjà vu.

“You’re lying again.” He let himself sound accusatory, almost eager. She closed her eyes. Fought against the urge to lift her hand to her forehead.

“Sherlock,” she let her tiredness enter her voice. “I understand what you’re saying. I agree with you. Now can we drop this?”

He looked at her for a long, painful moment. She stared back with an expression just as hard and determined as his, if now tinged with her distinct irritability he seemed to always want to instigate. The fingers of both his hands were moving with an agitation that reflected her own. His stare was so intent as to feel like a tangible force pushing against her resolve. But they’d done this several times before, and the majority of the time she had the last word.

Just as she registered how fast his right foot was tapping against the rug, he shot to his feet, fingers of both hands still moving against each other in a rapid sort of excitement that only made her more guarded. She looked up at him over the rim of her glasses, her neutral expression firmly in place.

“As you wish, Watson. I will leave you to your reading,” he said, punctuating his last word with a quick rise and fall of his right hand toward the medical journal that still sat closed in her lap. Then he turned sharply on his heel, his hands still in fists, and left the room. Joan felt something in her chest loosen at his departure. If it was relief, she couldn’t really feel it.


End file.
